FORMER Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) Babachir David Lawal and former Speaker of the House of Representatives Yakubu Dogara had for months acrimoniously led a northern Christian coalition to oppose the All Progressives Congress same-faith presidential ticket. That coalition has now fractured irretrievably as Mr Lawal and a few others, to the consternation of Mr Dogara, peremptorily chose to endorse Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi. In a statement he issued two Thursdays ago but dated November 23, Mr Lawal failed to explain why he broke ranks with the former Speaker. Two reasons have, however, been proffered for the hasty endorsement: either the coalition was taking too long to announce its stand due to an unbridgeable disagreement within the group or the initial lack of clarity on the subject by the Christian umbrella body, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), was proving too equivocal and constraining. Whatever the reasons are, Mr Lawal has finally and perhaps irrevocably jumped the gun and gone to town with the fractured view of his group.
Last Friday, Mr Dogara also headed North to seek for a quarry to endorse. He inexplicably found and embraced former vice president Atiku Abubakar, yes the same PDP presidential candidate who flipped-flopped over the murder of Deborah Samuel last May for what her killers alleged was blasphemy. In the view of the former Speaker, APC would soon implode, and LP could not possibly win the polls, and even if it did, it could not govern. After denouncing the APC for opposing inclusiveness and demonstrating a lack of sensitivity and fairness, he nevertheless offered no explanation for the contradiction of supporting another northern Muslim after about eight years of the northern Muslim Muhammadu Buhari. It is strange that any Christian from the North could fail to see that what is propelling Messrs Lawal and Dogara has nothing to do with Christian principles and values.
The former SGF predicated his group’s endorsement on the following: “As one of the foremost critics of APC’s single-faith presidential ticket and also in deference to those who have patiently waited for our guidance as to where to pitch our tent, after a painstaking review and analysis of the alternative presidential tickets, we now wish to recommend the Obi/Datti presidential ticket. Obviously, a Christian/Muslim presidency like the Obi/Datti one will be most appropriate at this stage of our political journey, more so, since we are now transiting from a Muslim/Christian presidency. It will also achieve the regional shift of the presidency from the current NW/SW to a SE/NW presidency as popularly being canvassed…”
Mr Lawal’s presumptuously political arguments are not infallible. They are in fact deeply flawed, regardless of his conclusions. He is chairman of the coalition, yet he lacked the discipline and sagacity to wait for a consensus before announcing the endorsement. He thus opened himself to searing allegation of inducement in his endorsement of Mr Obi. An online newspaper quoted a source within his group as denying the allegation; but rumours of improper dealing have refused to go away. Mr Lawal, who is a pastor, may very well be motivated by purely ecclesiastical reasons. But by hastily throwing his lot with Mr Obi, leaving his co-traveller, Mr Dogara, in a bind, he confirms irrevocably and demeaningly that he and others like him are motivated by personal not Christian principles. The former Speaker initially disowned the endorsement and claimed that the coalition he co-chaired was still preparing its position to be announced at an interfaith event a little later. It would have been a tall order for him to subsequently align himself with Mr Lawal’s hasty endorsement which mixed religious motives with improperly digested regional and geopolitical objectives. The former SGF is entitled to vent his distaste for APC’s style and politics, but given the noble goals he pretends to prosecute, not to say the body of Christ he claims to represent, it is indefensible that his style and choice do not also evince the wisdom frequently associated with his faith.
It is not known whether Mr Lawal took Mr Dogara into confidence before releasing his one-sided statement, but hours after the SGF’s statement was made public, the former Speaker issued a damning rebuttal suggesting that the coalition was yet to speak. Mr Dogara was less combative, but he did not mince words in disowning Mr Lawal’s unilateral action. Should Mr Dogara and the remnant with him eventually align themselves with Mr Lawal at any later date, his effort would be superfluous. But should they take a different position, as they have done, the dissension would bring to an end an exercise replete with anger than Christian commonsense. In the circumstance, the self-interest and political survival that brought them together proved potent enough to split their ranks and make nonsense of their homiletical verbiage on behalf of Christianity.
No one knows what role the initial pussyfooting by CAN has played in compounding the confusion. The umbrella Christian body had at first tempestuously condemned the APC’s same-faith presidential ticket, while many of its leading lights had also endorsed Mr Obi before they had the chance to reflect on the quality and competence of the other candidates, or even before they had the chance to consider the terrible consequences of trying to cajole the faithful to vote one way or the other. Unable to give the necessary guidance their members needed in those heady days after the parties unveiled their presidential tickets, many groups within CAN ran riot with their opinions and positions. But finally, after many uncertain and temperamental months, CAN has done the right thing by listening to the candidates and announcing to Nigerian Christians to vote their conscience. This position may doubtless take the wind out of the sail of the Lawal-Dogara coalition, despite the refusal of a few CAN chapters to embrace neutrality. Whatever the Lawal-Dogara coalition says now, assuming they can even force unity upon themselves, will only have minimal significance in the Christian North. That significance would be insufficient to tilt the pendulum one way or the other.
Whenever Christian leaders abandon the tenets of their faith to swim in the murky waters of politics, they have often fared very badly. Lending their pulpits to politics and politicians not only disrespects their Lord and compromises and pollutes their faith, it also predisposes them into violating in the same breath the love and unity their faith enjoins them to show one another. Their assignment is to witness to and illuminate the world, and to season and preserve it by building men and women of unimpeachable character to be deployed, like Daniel and Joseph, as ambassadors of their faith to the secular world. Their early fathers cut and paved the path for them to follow; but they have redefined their assignment to mean building and promoting presidents and vice presidents, senators and lawmakers, quite without a corresponding and scrupulous attention to the elected men’s ethical standing. The pollution continues apace. Perhaps the spectacular falling out of Messrs Lawal and Dogara will illustrate to them how dangerously they had all along flirted with fire. CAN may now be having second thoughts about 2023, but it is not clear whether by initially dismantling the ramparts of their faith and misleading their members they had not become like everyone else, ordinary and worldly.
Adeleke as Osun’s storm petrel
THE only sensible thing Ademola Adeleke has done in one week since he was sworn in as governor of Osun is reverting the name of the state to Osun State. The State of Osun, the needless contrivance dreamt up by former governor Rauf Aregbesola, was neither popular as the ex-governor imagined, nor necessary. However, Mr Adeleke will still have to deal with the legislative process that modified the name of the state under Mr Aregbesola. He will not shirk that duty. Hardly anyone will stand in his way, not even the harassed and depleted ranks of the ex-governor’s supporters, assuming they were in a position to stop the inevitable. By now, they probably reason illogically of course, that the wound inflicted by an enemy is more tolerable than the wound by a friend. But wound is wound, especially if it is fatal; it offers no consolation whatsoever. Apart from restoring the state’s constitutionally recognised name, Mr Adeleke has stirred up another storm and needlessly attracted to himself the name of a storm petrel.
Other than dancing the lazy days away, for which he has become nationally famous, and which requires little effort and does not tax the mind, every step he has taken so far has been hasty, controversial and amateurish. In his view, everything done after he was declared winner of the July 16 governorship election was either suspicious or illegal. So, he sacked 12,000 workers he claimed his predecessor recently recruited, but offered no substantiation how he arrived at the number. He also suspended three monarchs enthroned by his predecessor, and without recourse to the law, suspended the State electoral commission (OSIEC). The problem with all this ‘military style’ actions is not whether he is right or wrong, but whether he has found enough time to carefully study the problems before pronouncing on them. How he thought being combative would impress anyone is hard to explain. In the circumstance, he even clumsily contradicted himself by setting up, via Executive Order 6, a review panel to look into all the fiery executive orders (3, 4 and 5) he issued on his first day in office after his inauguration last Sunday.
Soon, Mr Adeleke will find out that governing a state, especially one in which nearly all its governorship polls had been keenly contested and the margin of victory slim, is far more arduous than his dancing pirouettes. The state as well as other observers will concede to him the opportunity of making mistakes and correcting himself. Perhaps he will soon settle down, not to govern brilliantly as the contemptuous Southwest would never vouchsafe him, but at least to make fewer mistakes than he seems fated. He is still putting together a cabinet, and it is hoped he will assemble a far more interesting crowd than his imaginations can handle, men and women of steel and character who would take care of the home front while he partied. As this column mused when he was declared winner of the poll in July, those who sponsored and plotted his victory must now ineluctably find him a regent. When he was in the Senate, he was largely anonymous, contributing nothing and gaining even much less. Promoted to State House, it is clear Mr Adeleke’s backers have aimed at goals far beyond his ken.
Had Mr Adeleke exhibited the exertions a state governor should prove capable of, he would have reflected on the ramifying implications of his electoral victory. That would have saved him from the precipitate actions he took a day after assuming office, including his needlessly combative determination to erase his predecessors’ legacies. There is still no proof that he has the capacity for deep reflections. His victory split the state right down the middle, with his 403,371 (50.145) votes to his opponent Gboyega Oyetola’s 375,027 (46.62%) votes. And for an election that witnessed a turnout of about 42.16 percent, in a state with two All Progressives Congress (APC) senators to his Peoples Democratic Party’s one senator, and six APC House of Representatives members to his party’s three, not to mention the dominant APC majority in the House of Assembly, it was expected that he would be far less exuberant and more calculating than he has been. With a state nearly half of which is for his opponent as it is for him, he was also required to be more circumspect in deploying huge and mollifying statecraft techniques, and providing even-tempered leadership. But perhaps what Osun will be contending with in the months ahead may be a question of the governor’s capacity rather than a malicious desire to revenge past hurts.
It would be unduly optimistic to expect anything grand from Mr Adeleke. His first few actions show a man and politician out of his depth as far as governance is concerned. It is hypothetically possible to get him a great regent or an assemblage of great minds, but without politics and governance inhering in the elected governor, it is hard to see how he can bridge the chasm that already dangerously exposes itself in Osun. The APC is confident they can get Mr Adeleke’s victory overturned. If they do, their task in restoring normality would be no less difficult, for a few months of the PDP would likely muddy the waters and even make the dancing senator’s abysmal reign wistful to the implacable and inconsolable few who continue to nurse one grievance or the other against Mr Oyetola.
Between Aisha Buhari and Soludo
AISHA Buhari, wife of the president, and Charles Soludo, Governor of Anambra State, are both recent victims of cyberstalking. But both initially reacted differently to the provocations. Aminu Mohammed Adamu, a student of the Federal University, Dutse, Jigawa State, had ridiculed the first lady for being overweight, a problem he controversially attributed to her feeding fat on the country’s resources and at the expense of the poor. Predictably incensed, she reported the matter to the law enforcement agencies. Mr Adamu’s arrest in turn became controversial because of speculations about how he was treated in detention before he was charged in court. But had the 400-level university student limited himself to ridiculing the first lady, as indecent and irreverent as that might be, it is unlikely the matter would have escalated. The problem is that he laced the ridicule with inflammatory and inciting innuendoes of corruption.
Days later, it emerged that Mr Adamu had a habit of posting inciting and insensitive statements on social media, and because he was never held to account, he had thought he could get away with murder. For instance, three days after Deborah Samuel, a second year Economics student of the Shehu Shagari College of Education, was lynched by fellow students on May 13, Mr Adamu tweeted in Hausa that he and others like him were prepared to deal with those who publicly mourned and sympathised with the murdered student. Why the country’s students’ union and other commentators fail to see the significance of holding social media bullies to account is difficult to explain. Mrs Buhari of course had the choice not to press charges, and she has exercised that choice. It should be respected. But the question now is who will have the courage to curb the lawlessness spiraling on social media?
Professor Soludo also caved in before Peter Obi’s supporters after they threatened to force his resignation and make Anambra ungovernable should he fail to apologise for attacking the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate. The cyber bullying was ferocious and almost universal in the Southeast, and the eminent professor simply wilted. Taking advantage of a public function in which both he and Mr Obi met, he grinned widely and professed his brotherliness and friendship with the LP candidate. His traducers then relented. Of course, Prof Soludo knew that what he wrote about Mr Obi’s game plan was unimpeachable. But he was clearly unnerved by the avalanche of social media threats thrown at him by Mr Obi’s maddened supporters. He has lived to fight another day; but it is unclear even to him whether he had acted smartly by rapidly wilting before the rabble.
It was Mrs Buhari’s honour to bring the insolent Mr Adamu to account. She finally chose not to. And Prof Soludo may have accidentally discovered that silence is the best answer to social media lynch mobs. But by retreating in the face of battle with abominable trolls, both victims may have abandoned the field to barbarians determined to drag everybody down with them into the sewers.
